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Monday, 6 July 2015

Shiba Inuko-San by Uzu Review

Oh my gaawwwd, I nearly had an aneurysm reading this… this thing!The comic is about a dog in a schoolgirl outfit called Shiba and her human friends Chako and Naporin. Shiba may talk but is otherwise very obviously a dog. Chako repeatedly questions whether Shiba is a dog. Why? It’s clearly a dog! And when I say repeatedly, I mean twice every page for nearly 120 pages because each page is made up of two four-panel strips, laid out vertically, side by side, and she’s so stupid she has to question whether the dog in front of her is actually a dog all the time.

…

That’s it by the way. There’s no story/sanity here – that’s literally all there is to this book. An example strip would be Chako and Shiba standing around, Chako questioning whether Shiba is a dog, and Shiba wagging her tail. That’s it. Or they’re eating ice-cream and some cream goes on Shiba’s nose. Chako watches as Shiba licks it off with her dog tongue wondering if Shiba is a dog.

Mind-numbing inanity doesn’t come close to describing this comic!

I know that you read manga right to left but it’s not immediately apparent how to read these mini-comics. You start with the right one and read down, then move to the left one and read down. For the first few pages I just read right to left before I realised I was supposed to do it a different way. A note at the start would’ve been useful as it’s not immediately apparent. That said the correct method only just makes the strips marginally more coherent!

Obviously I’m not the target audience for this – I’m not concussed, a baby, or a Japanese schoolgirl whose veins, instead of blood, pump pure KAWAII (the only readers who could possibly enjoy this) – but somehow it’s a TV series now!

Aaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhh, it’s a fucking dog in a school uniform AHAHAHAHAHAHHAH!!!!!!1 (Gets carted off to the nut house gibbering that last line repeatedly)